Donald Trump is elected and I am enraged, despondent, humiliated.
I walked my first picket line at 18. Protesting the Vietnam War.
I didn’t even know what the Vietnam War was exactly.
Everybody at Pomona College was doing it. Well all the cool people.
Justice, truth, humanity, peace, love.
I learned about it, the war that is, and I was still opposed to it.
Put my body on the line as the police menaced toward us, waving truncheons.
Take off your earrings somebody said. They’ll rip them out of your ears.
Don’t give them anything to grab.
Raw force.
We retreated.
Justice, truth, humanity, peace, love lightly overlie violence.
It’s easy to put your body on the line at 20, but it gives you pause at 66.
The victories were fragile and now it is all gone for me,
In the blink of an eye.
Another false identity unmasked.
And maybe I am wrong
And the story has simply moved on.
Leaving emptiness to sit with and not push away.
I walk to Starbucks on the Boulevard, sitting under the palm trees
And the cars going by.
The old white guys are holding forth around a table as they do every morning.
The huge pale greyhound eases himself onto the terra cotta tiles, meticulously
Stretches his dainty paws and rests his chin on his legs.
They usually talk about the industry, the only industry worth talking about in Los Angeles.
Today someone is explaining how to bribe a valet to park your car closer.
Commonplace corruption built in.
No escape.
And Donald Trump will be president.
It’s going to be how it is.
